Posted by Ian FAIRNIE on Sep 13, 2024
Darren Reynolds returns
 
 
We recently welcomed back Darren Reynolds, who previously spoke to us about Destiny Rescue, an organisation that rescues young girls who have been recruited/sold, then usually taken to a nearby country to work in the sex tourism industry.
 
Darren now works for “Every Daughter Matters” (EDM) and spoke to Applecross Rotary members and friends about Human Trafficking in Nepal.  This term does not indicate what really drives this business.  In reality it’s a dangerous mixture of money and sex. 
 
Girls as young as 10 are promised work in India, often starting as a member of a street begging gang, then ‘progressing’ to brothels, small factories, and even organ and skin harvesting for transplant surgeries in Indian cities.
 
EDM works with local police and aid workers along the porous Nepalese border with India.  Similar ‘businesses’ exist in Thailand using girls from Myanmar (Burma).  The point of this cross border trafficking is it provides an excuse for local police to not get involved with someone from another country.
 
The scale of this trafficking is enormous - EDM estimates 25,000 girls are taken across to the border into India every year.  EDM rescued 2,399 girls in July this year.
 
It costs an average of $180 to rescue a girl and return her to her family, after learning some useful skills that can help increase the family income when they get back home.  Some schools Darren works with in Perth hold fundraising ‘lapathons' and and each time another $180 is raised the oval scoreboard records that another girl can be rescued.
 
Members and friends may find the following worth reading:
 
 
FOOTNOTE: I used to lead study tours of university students to Asia, and often we would spend some time with Hill Tribe people in Chiangmai, Thailand.  In the bars of Chiang Mai there were always small groups of middle aged European men, indulging in what was called ’sex-tourism’.  What was even more confronting we that some of the young girls in the bars had been sold by their impoverished and stateless families.  The ones you saw were usually selling flowers or begging.  The older ones were in one of the rooms at the back of the bar.